Editors' Review

Is Instagram's Android photo app as good as the original iOS app? The new Instagram for Android has better performance, more advanced photo-editing options (like double-tapping on filters to adjust strength), and easier video sharing.

Pros

Kindles passion for photography: Instagram for Android strikes us as the most engaging photo app/social network for amateur and professional photographers on Google Play. It has a gorgeous design, an easy-to-use camera with autostraightening, professional-looking filters, a beautiful photo feed, graceful navigation, and effortless social sharing, Even if you don't see yourself as a photographer, Instagram's unlimited image storage and timeline-based feed is still useful for storage and backup purposes.

Streamlined design: Whether you're swiping between tabs to access the photo feed, camera, or your profile page, snapping photos on the go, applying filters to images, or exploring your feed, you'll be impressed with this app's gracefulness. The UI not only looks good, but it also moves fluidly, with smooth scrolling and transitions, and intuitive and responsive controls.

Fantastic content and vibrant community: The sheer amount of high-quality images snapped every day by the Instagram community is astonishing, as is user engagement. Interacting with users through comments is great fun.

Cons

Relatively slow image processing: While the app itself moves smoothly, processing an image after adding a filter does take a while. It isn't a big issue, but may be annoying now and then, when you want to quickly edit images on the go.

Startup crashes: The app crashed twice immediately after launch while we tried to create a new account using our email address. We eventually managed to register on our third attempt.

Bottom Line

Instagram stands out as a spectacular photography app for both novices and pros. Even if you don't want to share your photos with the world, you should still download this app because of the humongous number of gorgeous images taken by other users, which you can like, share, and save to your favorites. Overall, this app is almost as good as the iOS one, save for the slower image-processing speed.

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Publisher's Description

Over 130 million users love Instagram!It's a simple way to capture and share the world's moments on your Android.Customize your photos and videos with one of several gorgeous and custom built filter effects. Transform everyday moments into works of art you'll want to share with friends and family.Share your photos and video in a simple photo stream with friends to see - and follow your friends' photos with the click of a single button. Every day you open up Instagram, you'll see new photos from your closest friends, and creative people from around the world.Features 100% free custom designed filters: XPro-II, Earlybird, Rise, Amaro, Hudson, Lo-fi, Sutro, Toaster, Brannan, Inkwell, Walden, Hefe, Nashville, 1977, and others. Linear and Radial Tilt-Shift blur effects for extra depth of field. Instant sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and Foursquare Unlimited uploads Interact with friends through giving & receiving likes and comments Works with Android versions 2.2 and above that support OpenGL ES 2 And much much moreRecent changes:* Automatically straighten your photos when you take them with the Instagram camera* Simplified video settings to give you more control when sound plays* Added setting to help you control data usage when watching video= New in 4.1 =* Share videos from your photo library* Recording video is now also supported for all devices running ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich)Content rating: Medium Maturity

What's new in this version:

Improved design

Automatically straighten your photos when you take them with the Instagram camera

Simplified video settings to give you more control when sound plays

Added setting to help you control data usage when watching video

Share videos from your photo library Recording video is now also supported for all devices running Ice Cream Sandwich

a bit tricky to use at first, not intuitive enough for us dumb Android users - lol. And there are to many similar retro effects.

Summary

I'm still convinced that making beautiful digital photos look like crappy Instamatic photos from thirty years ago is a fad that we're all going to look back on in a few years and wonder "What were we thinking, those look terrible"...... sort of like how we look at acid-washed jeans today.

But- at least there's one less thing for Apple users to be so damn smug about.

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